ARTICLES ABOUT UNFORGETTABLE BY DATE - PAGE 3

Jim Panopoulos, home on a 30-day furlough, was in a North Avenue movie theater when the action outside of the theater turned greater than that on the screen. Jerry Zarend was visiting relatives in Mount Clemens, Mich., when news of the Japanese surrender raced through the then rural suburb north of Detroit. Milton Bates, serving with the Army in Europe, thought of only one thing when he heard the news: "I'm going home." These are some of the reminiscences that reached me after my column last week on the end of World War II, when a war-weary nation let go in a coast-to-coast explosion of joy tinged with sadness for those who didn't live to see victory.

A DECADE from now, only serious racings fans will remember the name of the horse who won the Preakness Stakes yesterday at Pimlico Race Course. But no one who saw the race will ever forget what happened at the head of the stretch. "It was an amazing performance," said Tim Ritchey, trainer of Afleet Alex, the horse who won. This running of Baltimore's Triple Crown race will long be remembered as the one that belonged on Amazing Animal Videos - the one in which a horse buckled and almost fell with just a quarter-mile to go, but somehow kept his balance and, almost impossibly, went on to win in a runaway.

"THERE'LL ALWAYS be arsters. But there might be a time when there won't be neither arstermen." -The Oystermen of the Chesapeake by Robert de Gast The year was 1968. Oysters were still king of the Maryland seafood industry, and the bay still years away from showing major environmental decline. A young photographer, who immigrated to Annapolis from the Netherlands, was haunting every watermen's harbor in Maryland, shooting nearly every day for a year. He produced a work of genius, one of the finest books on the bay ever done.

THIS PAST FALL proved unforgettable for Larry Athen. For starters, he became a head football coach for the first time - at 61. The Ellicott City resident's team of 10-to-12-year-old newcomers and players still working on basics had not won a game in the Western Howard County Warhawks youth club's first two seasons. But Athen's team finished with a .500 record and earned a berth in the National Division championship game in the Central Maryland Youth Football League. His players, in Athen's opinion, learned a lot about life in the process, a concept he has long viewed as a benefit of sports.

Brian Wilson, Smile (Nonesuch Records, $19.98) The legend that Smile is one of the greatest pop records ever to come undone has floated around for nearly 40 years. It was supposed to be Brian Wilson's ultimate masterstroke, an album that would surpass the magic of his previous work, the Beach Boys' celebrated Pet Sounds from 1966. The arranger-producer and driving force behind the Beach Boys would render the Beatles irrelevant with this wondrous, sonically rich dream. But the recording sessions soon became a nightmare.

The Rev. Bernard J. Suppe, the longtime chaplain at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore who overcame a tragic childhood to spread joy and hope to the sick and dying, died of a stroke Saturday at the hospital. He was 82. Over the past year, Father Suppe maintained his wry humor and good spirits despite deteriorating health that included operations on his spine, a total hip replacement and the implanting of a pacemaker in his chest. Bent nearly in half and hobbling around the hospital with the aid of a walker, Father Suppe told a reporter for The Catholic Review last month: "I'm bent over now, but my back is not me. My heart, soul and mind are very erect.

LONG BEACH, Calif. - Wednesday night might have been the most memorable in the 36-year existence of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club. On one coast, the NBAC owned the opening night of the U.S. Olympic team trials, as Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff swept the 400-meter individual medleys. On the other, the NBAC dealt with devastation. Floodwaters that swept down the Jones Falls caused severe damage at the Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center, the only training base Phelps has ever known.

Everything is magnified when a Triple Crown is on the line, even the losses. Seventeen horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness and then faltered in the Belmont. That includes five starting in 1997. They failed trying to join the immortal 11 who have swept the series known as the Triple Crown. On Saturday, Smarty Jones will try to become the 12th when he competes in the 136th Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. Smarty Jones has never lost in his eight races. But good, even great, horses have won the Derby and Preakness, but lost the Belmont.

CHICAGO - On Monday, after the approval of an interim constitution by the Iraqi Governing Council, one member proclaimed, "This is a great day in the history of Iraq, an unforgettable day." Tuesday became unforgettable as well when suicide bombers at Shiite Muslim shrines killed well over 100 people. The new constitution is advertised as laying the foundation for democracy, human rights and harmony among Iraq's contending groups. But it's hard to lay a foundation in a minefield, particularly when the mines keep detonating.

Funny, sweet and only mildly offensive, 50 First Dates proves a lot of things: that Adam Sandler can be funny, that Drew Barrymore is about as adorable as humanly possible, that it's hard to go wrong when surrounding yourself with performing sea lions and that the romantic comedy is one genre that'll never go out of style. It also suggests that Sandler may be - dare we say it? - growing, as both an actor and a comedian. The movie uses his deadpan delivery to its advantage, and it lets him act like a real person, leaving the stupid schtick largely to sidekick Rob Schneider, who's as irritating as ever (playing filmdom's least convincing Hawaiian native)